A Bi-polar World 1945 - 1960

Thesis:  In 1945 the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as world superpowers.  These two nations, in a growing competition for power, influence, and ideological superiority, created a bi-polar world, in which the older systems of multiple power centers, shifting alliances, and multiple ideological approaches to political reality were changed into two opposing camps.

In the first years of the 1940's the United States entered the Second World War on the side of the allies after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941.  In 1942, the United States joined Germany's major enemies in Europe, the Soviet Union and Great Britain in an alliance known as the Atlantic Charter initiated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on board a ship in the Atlantic Ocean in early 1942.  The agreement made was simply to cooperate in the effort to defeat the Third Reich in Europe.  Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, would join later in 1942, as Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began in earnest.  As it turns out, this pact had consequences far beyond the end of the war.

In the start the Atlantic Charter was based upon the principles enunciated by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, known as the Fourteen Points, that had contributed so much to the willingness of Germany to consider a peace in 1918.  The alliance between the three powers, despite the high principles which they enumerated as their reasons for working together against the Axis, was no more than a military alliance with a relatively short term goal.  There was no inkling at this point in time that the seeds were being sewn for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the Warsaw Pact.

The three powers began to recognize that simple military cooperation would not be sufficient to win the war, and especially to create a successful and lasting peace afterword, during the first summit of their leaders, in Teheran, Iran, between November 28 and December 1, 1943.  At this meeting, after significant pressure from Stalin to open a second front in Europe to relieve the Soviet Red Army (at the time, the Soviets were the only ones fighting the Germans directly, and they had begun to turn the tide).  The United States and Great Britain agreed at this meeting to open the second front in France in the summer of 1944.  In exchange, Stalin agreed to join his two allies in the fight against Japan in the Pacific once Hitler was defeated.

There were ulterior motives here in the case of all three of the leaders.  Stalin wanted to relieve pressure on the Red Army, but was not happy with the idea of an allied assaulty up the boot of Italy, and then possibly through Eastern Europe to Germany.  This route would mean that the Americans and British would be able to occupy East European nations as they moved through, a strategy which he hoped to reserve to himself, knowing that occupation at the end of the war would mean a powerful influence on the political structure of those nations in the post-war periond.  Stalin wanted Eastern Europe as a buffer zone for the Soviet Union, and so wanted to be sure the allied stayed in the West, attacking from France, and allowing him to occupy the territory he felt he needed.

Franklin Roosevelt was not unaware of this situation, but he had a motive of his own - he began talking about the strategy of the Four Policemen, in which the United States, Great Britain, The Soviet Union, and a reconstituted France would act as international policemen to protect the world from aggression.  To get agreement to go forward on talks about this idea (which eventually combined with Wilsonian ideas to become the United Nations), Roosevelt was willing to make many concessions.

Churchill appears to have been desperate enough for continued assistance from the United States and USSR that he was willing to accept these backroom political deals to keep the alliance together, despite his suspicions of Stalin.

By 1944, confidence among the allies in victory over Germany was high, and the endgame over the "new world order" of the time began in earnest as each of the allies began to assert their own plans for dealing with Germany and reconstituting Europe.  In many ways, Stalin had an upper hand here, as Russia was at the time in the process of liberating Poland, the Balkans, and the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.  All three agreed that their goals would include disarming Germany, denazifying Germany, and the division of Germany into four occupation zones, one each for Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, which would each administer, police, and help to rebuild its respective zone.

However, Stalin also had plans to dismember Germany - to take it apart into smaller pieces and avoid reunification, and to require reparations of up to $20 billion, which would have been impossible to repay.  The United States and Great Britain refused to go along with these plans.  This is where we can begin to see a fraying of the allies' relationship - the roots of the Cold War that would break out soon after the end of World War II.  The United States and Great Britain were interested in creating a new world order that would bring Germany back into the community of nations, to restore a normal situation as soon as possible.  Stalin, on the other hand, was interested primarily in preventing even the possibility that Germany could ever attack the Soviet Union again.

At the Yalta Conference in February of 1945, the big three allies continued their negotiations on the postwar order.  By this time, as the leaders were meeting in the Crimean resort town of Yalta, hosted by Stalin, Germany was clearly losing the war.  Roosevelt was therefore pushing for the Soviets to get into the war against Japan, to take the pressure off the United States in Asia and the Pacific.  Roosevelt had also begun to suspect that Churchill's strategy included the idea of expanding the British Empire, which he did not support at all.  There is evidence that Great Britain was still, in 1945, hoping to hold onto its empire, but expansion was probably not an aim.  However, Roosevelt's chief concern was that any concession the Great Britain in the way of expanding its empire would ecourage Stalin to seek more territory for the USSR, as well.  So Roosevelt's policy included a get tough approach with Churchill, and an attempt to buddy up to "Uncle Joe" Stalin, whom he characterized as a moderate, interested in peace, but forced to behave brutally by the Communist Party.

At Yalta, Roosevelt proposed the creation of the United Nations.  Churchill proposed the restoration of France to Great Power status to balance Germany, and Stalin attempted to consolidate Soviet control of Poland and the Balkans region.  Ultimately, among the agreements made at Yalta were a guarantee by the United States and Great Britain that Russia's 1941 Borders would be accepted (thus guaranteeing Russian gains in 1939 at the expense of Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.  In exchange, Stalin agreed to hold free elections, and to accept democratic governments, in Eastern Europe.

In July, 1945, just after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the three allies held one more conference, this time at Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. Roosevelt was absent - he had died  in April of 1945 of a massive stroke - so the United States was represented by its new President, Harry S. Truman.  Churchill was also forced to stay home, having lost an election to Clement Attlee and the Labour Party.  So Stalin was the only one of the original three left at the Potsdam Conference.  There, the three allies agreed to move Poland's border's west as they recreated that state, in order to accommodate the agreement to allow Russia to keep its 1941 borders.  This meant taking chunks out of Germany to give to Poland.  The allies also divided Germany into 4 occupation zones, and set up a council of ministers to draft the peace treaties to end the war in Europe.

One of the key questions in the decisions on how to deal with Germany (and Japan) after the allied victory in 1945 was how best to deal with the defeated nations so as to prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future.  This concern arose from the fact that the Second World War had come so soon on the heals of the First, which itself had been a disastrous and brutal conflict.  The fear was that somehow it could happen again.

One of the first acts at the end of the war was to bring home as many of the soldiers who had fought as possible.  While the United States and the Soviet Union were really the only states left capable of projecting power, both also needed to reduce expenditures by minimizing the number of soldiers in uniform.  In addition, until September of 1945, the United States continued to fight the war in Asia and the Pacific, and the Soviet Union joined that effort in August.  So in Europe, the United States reduced its forces from 7.5 million to 1.3 million within six months after the surrender of the Germans.  The Soviet Union also reduced its troop strength in the West from 13 million to about 2.6 million.  Thus while both countries made significant reductions, there was an imbalance of forces, and the Soviet Union continued to occupy and control most of Eastern Europe.  It was already becoming clear, and Churchill warned the United States of this, that without American soldiers on the ground, there was nothing to stand between the Soviet army and a march to the English Channel.  Still, in the last months of 1945, despite British fears, and differences between the Soviet and U.S. governments on implementation of the peace, the alliance held firm.

The disagreement came when further, more ideological and political attempts to prevent war were contemplated.  The proximate cause of the German, Italian, and Japanese turns to fascism seemed to have been in the Great Depression of the 1930's.  In the United States, the assumption that victory in the war had come from the American way of doing things - in particular, the fact that the United States had supplied most of the hardware, and most of the cash that led to the allied victory in Europe seemed to suggest that American capitalism was the most effective way of organizing an economy - led to the desire to, in effect, share the wealth.  The United States came to be committed to a new world order which was beneficial to the needs of capitalism - an all inclusive capitalism that would allow all to share in the wealth of the world through trade and cooperation.  Thus, in 1944, at a resort in New Jersey called Bretton Woods, the United States sponsored delegates from 44 different countries at a conference to discuss economic measures to prevent another postwar depression by setting in place a financial and trade system so strong, and so cooperative that such a global cash crisis could not occur again.  The "Bretton Woods Agreement" led to the creation of some critical world financial programs that are still with us today.  They include the World Bank (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development - its official name), the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the GATT, the precursor to the World Trade Organization), and the designation of the US Dollar as the international currency of choice.  These measures were intended to help provide money, particularly for European redevelopment and recovery, but also for the growing of global trade infrastructure; a system for helping insolvent or financially troubled nations through difficult periods, so that they could continue making payments and global cash flow could be maintained; a system for gradual elimination of trade barriers globally, and a common currency by which trade and economic measurements could be conducted.

There is little doubt that these organizations have made massive contributions to global financial security and increases in wealth.  However, it is also clear, partly because the United States controlled 60% of global trade at the end of WWII, and partly because there were no other currencies as strong, and partly because the efforts were happening under the auspices of the United States, that participation in this system was not automatic.  To recieve loans, assistance, and membership in the GATT, nations had to conform to American style capitalism.  This was not, apparently, an attempt to undermine communism in the Soviet Union, but was certainly seen as being so, which caused diplomatic tensions.

The work of the Bretton Woods Agreement was completed by 1946.  By 1948, the United States had also put in place the Marshall Plan.  This was a system to provide technical and economic aid to European countries devastated by the war.  The idea was that the United States would provide large amounts of money for investment and redevelopment of infrastructure, but that it had to be distributed by the European participants as a group.  The Marshall Plan, which led by 1952 to about $13 billion in aid, was certainly meant in part to undermine the efforts of socialists and communists in Europe, whose ideas had be receiving growing audiences in devastated postwar Germany, France, England, and other European nations.  The other effect of the Marshall Plan, however, was to encourage European cooperation.  The European Coal and Steel Community, the commission set up by the participants in the plan as the body to distribute the aid, became the precursor to the European Union of today.   The Soviet Union, which was invited to participate, declined, and required its client states in Eastern Europe to decline as well.  Once again, then, the American vision of the creation of a global community, beginning with joint economic activity, was at odds with the Soviet vision of a dis-integrated Germany.  Interestingly, the Marshall Plan was so successful in increasing American popularity in Europe, improving European economies, and creating a bulwark against communism that the United States attempted something similar with what came to be known as the Dodge Plan in Japan.

Another area of disagreement, as mentioned above, was the number of soldiers that the United States and the Soviet Union maintained in Europe after the War ended.  As American troop strength was drawn down to 1.3 million, Soviet troop strength, while reduced from wartime levels by 2/3 in the immediate postwar period still maintained 175 divisions, or 2.6 million men in uniform - twice that of the United States.  This was partially due to the greater amount of territory occupied and administered by the USSR after the war, and partly because of a perceived need by Soviet leaders for security and military power to deter any possible attackers.  American planners, noting that the USSR had faced nearly 2/3 of the Germany Army in Europe, whereas the other allies had faced only the remaining 1/3, and had not travelled as great distances as that between Stalingrad and Berlin, came to believe that not only did the Soviets have a numberical advantage, but that their soldiers were more experienced, and thus more useful in battle, than American soldiers of the time.  To compensate for this precieved imbalance of conventional forces, the United States came to rely on technology - specifically, weapons systems and atomic bombs (even developing tactical, or battlefield-sized, atomic weapons in the early 1950's in order to gain force parity with the USSR.

 
Additionally, Soviet control of Eastern Europe remained a thorn in the side of American diplomats, and Stalin refused to relinquish even a small part of that control.  Although Stalin had agreed that the Eastern European countries would be allowed to hold free democratic elections, it became clear very early that  the meaning of the term "free democratic elections" was different for Stalin than it is for us today.  Stalin and the Politburo refused to accept any democratically elected or otherwise empowered government that was not also friendly to Moscow.

In 1956, Poland and Hungary both decided to try to experiment with communism by installing slightly more market-friendly, less oppressive governments.  At this, the Soviet Union sent soldiers into the capitol cities of both countries, and quickly squashed the rellion

               

               
-  Willingness to intervene militarily (1956 Poland & Hungary)    

        3.  Modernization    
& Continued concentration of Economy on military    

        4.  Internal Discipline    
& Conformism